Comments on: NYT online hotlilnks—WTF??

By: Tyler Rousseau

Tyler Rousseau — Sat, 19 May 2007 18:48:00 +0000

Is the junk-linking due to the unwritten and unnoticed changes of their double-click-on-the-word-you-don’t-know feature?

By: Fichter

Fichter — Sat, 19 May 2007 01:50:00 +0000

Peter - I'm ROFL!

I love the link to Sphere the so closely related articles that bring up sports: cheerleading, softball, ...

I guess "Giants" was the first noun in the article title so that must be the NY Giants.

Darlene

By: Peter Bromberg

Peter Bromberg — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:51:00 +0000

I appreciate everyone’s comments and feedback. So I’m not the only one who’s noticed this strange phenemenon!!

I’m glad it’s given a few people a laugh too. Janie’s right–my filters are inoperable before 7:00 am

-pete

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 May 2007 17:25:00 +0000

Is this just a case of people not placing emphasis on the same types of information? Or of complete lack of knowledge? Maybe the hyperlinks are randomly generated? Whatever the case, I appreciate the poster’s ability to make light. Very rarely do I LOL when reading blog posts. Thank you!

By: Amy J. Kearns, MLIS

Amy J. Kearns, MLIS — Thu, 17 May 2007 03:51:00 +0000

Is that seriously the actual syntax of that sentence?

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 16 May 2007 16:22:00 +0000

I've had the same impression reading the news online - though some sites seem smarter than others about how they build their links. Here's part of an article from the AP this morning:

"Army Chief of Staff Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt the threat to Harry and his regiment were too great."

The hyperlink was for the words "Army Chief Of Staff" but not for Richard Dannatt. The links led to articles about other army chiefs of staff in other countries.

Lame.

Why can't they be more like the library and give us real information for free, darn it!

By: Lisa Coats

Lisa Coats — Tue, 15 May 2007 18:02:00 +0000

I second Janie’s comments. I’ve been very concerned lately reading any news online, even the Times. Just doesn’t seem like we’re getting the same quality as we used to, but I am loathe to chime into that “everything used to be better” crap. As far as Amy’s concern of following hyperlinks, I have taken to right clicking and opening everything into a ‘new window’ because I hate losing my original spot. Thanks for the know-what-you-mean chuckle, Pete.

By: Janie L. Hermann

Janie L. Hermann — Tue, 15 May 2007 13:50:00 +0000

I love it when Pete gets insomnia and posts in the wee hours of the morning. Makes for the best reading!! Thanks for making me laugh today.

By: mark zip

mark zip — Tue, 15 May 2007 13:34:00 +0000

Nice.

Of course it is automatic. There are no interns doing it, surely??

I would suspect that what is going on is that the Times CMS (content management system) is looking for terms it knows and just sticking the links in. It "knows" these links from tags assigned to other stories. While some tags are assigned by real people, many can be done automatically.

If they have a properly tweaked system, I bet it learns as it goes. Thus, in a year from now we can expect a similar article to have hyperlinks to the mote interesting items which they left out this time.

This assumes, of course, that they have not assigned some stupidly small value to the "how many words may i hyperlink in any paragraph" function. It also assumes that they have not assigned a high value to the "just how damn obscure can a term be before i hyperlink to it" function.

More than a few thinkers have suggested that as the tag cloud expands and hyperlinking is automated, we could end up with almost every noun (and, plausibly, adjective, verb, etc. etc.) in every article with a link attached. Which would make for some ugly reading.

Mark

(P.S. - Yes, I thought about hyperliking almost all the terms in this post, but just don't have time.)

By: Amy J. Kearns, MLIS

Amy J. Kearns, MLIS — Tue, 15 May 2007 13:07:00 +0000

First of all, that was hilarious, thanks for the morning laugh!

Second, so what is going on? Could there be some automated method someone or something is using to put in the hyperlinks?

Does the NYT think we the readers are too stupid to even understand those other terms even with a hyperlink?!

Are they testing us? Is it a joke? A prank?

Personally, I really love hyperlinks and enjoy them, although they often lead me off into the great void of the Internet never again to find my way back to the original link!

I think it is imperative that you, yes you, Peter Bromberg, keep a personal eye on this!

Fantastic post! :-) Classic!